


when your hands leap towards mine

by from



Series: blind date [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blind Date, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 12:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: Harry finds himself on a Friday night with someone else's blind date.





	when your hands leap towards mine

**Author's Note:**

> This was my original fill for the 'hijacked blind date' fic prompt before I set it aside for the _Guardian_ newspaper fusion that I posted. Written in 2015, edited in 2018.

Harry is slightly regretting popping into the local Italian for dinner. He’s looking around as the waitress clears the other place setting from his small round table and all he can see are people giggling and chatting, knees bumping under theirs. He’s not there alone because he does have a book with him, but he’s missing his friends, and maybe Nick, even though they agreed: no looking back.

He orders a glass of mellow red and studies the menu, half-hoping that nothing looks good so he can change his mind and pick up some Turkish takeaway for eating on the sofa instead, his book propped behind a container of veggie moussaka.

Someone is laughing about CBBC’s Chuggington and he feels it in his stomach, a jumpiness about being the only one who is a stranger to every other person there. Just this morning, one of his new students showed him the Trainees on her pencil case with their locomotive faces all lit up, and he has nobody to tell that story to over dinner.

“Hello. So sorry. I didn’t mean to be late.” Harry looks up at the Irish accent, realises there’s a guy in a button-down talking to … well, him. “I couldn’t find anywhere to park with a meter. I suppose it’s mostly permit parking round here.” The guy – nondescript cologne, product in his dyed hair – pulls out the chair across the table from Harry’s and sits down.

The waitress returns the place setting she took away earlier and fusses with the menus, stealing glances at Harry that probably mean she has mixed feelings about him as a customer. They slide off him, mostly because he’s preoccupied with waiting for the guy to see that he’s Harry, not whomever the guy was supposed to meet.

“You’re Harry, yeah?”

“Um ... Yes?”

“I thought so, but better safe than sorry,” the guy says cheerily, not seeming to notice the confusion. 

“I’m Niall,” he adds, extending his hand around the candle that the waitress lit when she sat Harry at the table. “Well, I suppose you already know that. Or maybe Marv and Roche didn’t tell you anything about me either.”

Harry has no idea who Marv and Roche are, but he does have an idea now about what’s happening and it’s not good. This bloke Niall thinks they’re on a blind date together – maybe a blind friend date but a blind date nonetheless – and Harry really should tell him he’s not the one.

He takes Niall’s hand anyway because he has been rude enough. Niall’s grip is firm but friendly, and his cold hand is almost as enormous as Harry’s own. “No, I don’t,” Harry says before letting go of it. “I don’t know anything.”

“Nice to meet you, Harry.”

“And you,” he replies automatically, though it might be the truth. Niall’s voice is raspy when it’s low.

“Mind if I get a beer? Not really in the mood for wine tonight.”

“’Course not,” Harry tells him, and watches Niall slip in an order with a passing waiter.

Harry knows he should say something. Then they’ll laugh about it, maybe stay to have their drinks, and go their separate ways. Or Niall will rush off to find his date, and Harry will be out of a few quid covering the beer. His own fault for not saying anything sooner.

“So, what’s good here?”

Harry has no clue and their -- really, his -- waitress is long gone, so: “Have you looked at the specials?”

“These?” Niall sets aside the menu and picks up the sheet of paper left on his bread plate. “Well, that’s me sorted,” he says after a moment, and just in time for the beer. It’s like watching someone walk through life on one of those moving walkways, Harry thinks, and sees himself being dragged along, possibly head first. “What about you?”

He’s starting to feel a little giddy with doom, but he decides he doesn’t want to eat alone, not if he can eat with Niall. “I think I’m having the seafood capellini.”

Niall swallows his first sip. “Oh? I thought you’d be a vegetarian.”

Harry feels slightly betrayed. Niall said he’d been told nothing about the person he’s supposed to meet, but it seems he knows enough to assume Harry would be a vegetarian. Harry wants to be told about everything else Niall is keeping from him and then feels bad because surely if there’s anyone who’s hiding something that matters, it’s Harry.

“’S just, every friend of Rochelle’s that I’ve met has been a vegetarian,” Niall says in the silence. His head is slightly bowed, as if he’s contemplating whether or not he has made a big mistake.

That’s probably why Harry finds himself clearing his throat and saying: “Um, yeah, but I’m like, pescatarian on weekends. The um, animal protein. Doctor’s orders. Can’t get enough of um, vegetables otherwise.” He can hardly believe himself. “And you? What are you having?”

“The risotto with the pancetta and wild mushrooms,” Niall says, toying with his glass. He’s got long bendy fingers with blunt nails. Harry wants to give him two dozen cans of cat food and watch him pull open the tabs one by one. “I hope they told you I eat meat, at least,” Niall adds. “Can’t live without it.”

Harry doesn’t say that he himself makes brilliant burger patties with pancetta in them and maybe Niall would like to come over and help one Saturday afternoon. It’s not a thing to say at the start of a date, especially when the date technically isn’t even his. “That doesn’t bother me.”

Niall smiles then, his face lighting up electric, and all Harry can think is: _I’m not sorry._

After their orders are in, Niall asks him how he knows Rochelle.

“I don’t actually know her,” Harry admits. “It’s a friend of a friend sort of thing, I guess?” Which isn’t a lie because if they put enough friends between them, someone is bound to be Harry’s friend. They might need to string a couple of million friends together, but this is London and they’d get there.

Niall nods, and his stories about his friendship with Rochelle and Marvin, and then about his friends and family back in Ireland, take them into another round of beer and wine. Harry is only half listening, mesmerised by sound of Niall’s little laughs and dreading the inevitable moment when Niall’s phone starts to ring because his real date is looking for him. 

There will be a publicly embarrassing ending to the fraudulent date, with Harry likely having to avoid the nice part of his neighbourhood because they will quite rightly brand him a date fraudster. A blind dating charlatan. A date thief! He has never stolen anything in his whole life and the first thing he steals is the priceless company of a decent and hot human being. They won't soon forget his prodigious feat and nefarious ways. But somehow he can’t seem to bring himself to care.

Miraculously, Niall’s phone doesn’t ring or ding or even buzz. If it’s going off somewhere on his person, he’s ignoring it. He even ignores it through Harry’s stories about his students, his thoughts on settling in at his first primary school, and his knock knock jokes. Only two, because there’s always a limit and he doesn’t want to test Niall’s. This date won’t be more than a one-off. Harry wants to remember that the food was good and he was brilliant throughout.

It’s late when Niall orders dessert and Harry a coffee. Niall’s pannacotta arrives when he’s in the loo and Harry quickly asks for the cheque so he can take care of it on his own, hoping to feel a little less guilty. But the guilt doesn’t stop growing because Niall decides to walk Harry home.

Harry is (guiltily!) torn about there being no goodnight kiss. He tells himself it’s for the best. They exchange numbers by way of Harry sending a text to Niall’s phone, which was left at work in Niall’s rush to get to dinner. But, as Harry explains to Louis on skype the next day, he isn’t going to call Niall. He’s keeping the number only so that when the angry texts do come through, he’ll know for certain it’s Niall and not Louis fucking with him. 

Harry hears nothing from Niall all week. It’s shit, but he knows what he did wasn’t exactly very nice. It was probably a bit creepy, or so Louis said, and Louis does know what he’s talking about most of the time.

The urge to call Niall is so strong, Harry takes to turning off his phone when he doesn’t need it, which is so unlike him that he gets a text from Mum asking if he’s ill. 

It’s impossible to think about someone so much after one date. Harry goes to bed penitently early on Friday, wanting to believe that Niall has taken over his mind only because he’s not used to being ashamed whilst not knowing how to apologise for it.

Saturday’s weather is glorious by the time he drags himself to the shops. He decides he’s finally going to use the old grill he got from Dad and buys groceries for a lunch on his tiny concrete patio. He doesn’t quite understand what all the knobs on it do, but some of them turn more easily than others and that’s probably as good as an instruction manual.

The doorbell rings as he’s washing up after his prep, the shrimp skewered and spiced. He pulls the door open to see Niall standing on the steps, arms crossed and visibly tense.

“Hey,” Harry says. He can see himself screaming ‘I’m so fucking sorry’ and shutting the door but he hasn’t done that since he was a kid, when everyone in his family felt sorry for something and he hit his limit first.

“Hey Harry,” Niall says back. And then they’re just awkwardly standing for a bit. It’s too much like another moment that’s also not theirs to have.

“Look, Harry,” Niall goes first, and it doesn’t sound good. “I knew. After I went to the toilet that night, I checked my phone and saw all the texts, the missed calls. And I don’t know, Harry. It was fucking confusing. So, it wasn’t actually my number that you texted so I’d have yours. Maybe you know that,” he says. “That was shit of me. Sorry. Not making excuses but it was fucking confusing.”

“I didn’t know that. I didn’t um, follow up. Not because I didn’t want to. It just didn’t seem right to use your number,” Harry says. “And I’m the one who should be apologising. I was like, being a bit of a creep. I’m so sorry, Niall.”

Niall looks away shrugging, and Harry wishes Niall hadn’t come at all if this is the only thing he’s here for. But Niall has a right to confront him. He probably also has a right to punch Harry in the face, and Harry doesn’t think he’d hit back.

“I wasn’t going to do this, but I was crossing the park and thought maybe I’d know how to get from there to here,” Niall says, rubbing the back of his neck. 

He lets out a nervous laugh before he swings round so they’re face to face. “All right, Harry who wasn’t my Harry but is somehow my Harry now,” he starts. “You owe me for the bollocking I got from Marv and Roche and the poor bastard who was in the restaurant next door, but other than that, I’d like to see you again. Now is good, but if you’re not free, then again after now.”

Harry doesn’t even have the urge to correct the syntax of that last sentence. He can’t. His whole face feels yellow and round and smiley. “I have some shrimp kebabs about to go on the grill. D’you want to come in?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Niall nods. “I’d love to.”

“Wait.” Harry stops him at the door, one hand on his warm shirt sleeve. “They’re wrapped in bacon, though. I’m not actually a pescatarian or a vegetarian.” He quickly adds, “But that’s the only other lie, I promise.”

When Niall smiles and steps forward, Harry steps back to let him in.

~

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I am also [fromward](http://fromward.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
